The Personal and Professional Characteristics of a Successful Global Leader - Article Example

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A GLOBAL LEADER This paper explores what makes someone a leader, what does it mean and what pains it takes to be a global leader. Leader is defined as a person who guides others towards common goal, showing the way by giving an example. The history of our civilization shows that any person can become a leader. But even here, simple desire of leadership was not enough because the yearning for learning and developing proper skill was required. Such aim has to be based on a strong will and true hunger of success. The main premise of this article is what features of character and professional skills are necessary to become a successful global leader, why one person can easily become a leader while another faces a lot of difficulties. This paper examines the researches of many scientists and professors who made a great contribution in the world leadership. Keywords: global leader, success, leadership THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUCCESSFUL GLOBAL LEADER 2 The personal and professional characteristics of a successful global leader Numerous studies have been conducted on various facets of global leadership, focusing on different knowledge and skills. Nowadays, many people dream about successful leadership and being at the top. Some of them are convinced that an authoritative leader has to be only smart; others disagree, considering leader as a person who is not only knowledgeable, but also has various skills and ample experience. In modern life, the concepts of leader and success have become synonyms. Every person who made a decision to begin the path to success has to turn into the leader himself or herself at the beginning of this way and realize who exactly is a leader. Without this, any undertaking will come to an end with failure. However, global leader is a person who can take a reasonable view of the international situations and successfully provide the management of people who are dissimilar to the leader and from one another and have different cultural backgrounds, with diverse legislative structure and economic systems. Caligiuri, Welch, Achua, Spreitzer, McCall, Mahone, Lussier give a clear stand what is the leadership and who is a leader. To understand how to become a leader and what to do for that it is necessary to learn all their opinions and suggestions. It is a big responsibility to assume the leadership and guide people in fact rather than in word. A successful global leader has many targets. Global leaders are defined as executives who are in jobs with some international scope. Global leaders expand business into foreign markets, conceive strategies on global basis, manage and motivate. (Spreitzer, McCall, & Mahoney, 1997). A global leader works with people all around the world. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A GLOBAL LEADER 3 What does it mean to be a global leader? First of all, a leader is a person who knows how to control, motivate and direct not only other people, but also his or her own efforts towards the achievement of goals and the solution of problems. Naturally, the simple desire is not enough: a person with such a wish, has to have some unique characteristic features, otherwise, the failure is inevitable. If the person is incapable to be self-motivated, to set tasks and solve them, how can he or she expect an excellent performance of duties from employees? The global leadership includes all the conceptions of a good leader, but with more flexibility. A leader must have an influence on people. It is a person who is not only a good team player, but also inspirer for co-workers. Jack and Suzy Welch (2013) stated the following: When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. It’s about making the people who work for you smarter, bigger, and bolder. Nothing you do anymore as an individual matters except how you nurture and support your team and help its members increase their self-confidence. Your success as a leader will come not from what you do but from the reflected glory of your team ( How to Think Like a Leader, para. 3).Margaret Thatcher once said that the power is totally invisible thing. She stated, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t” (An Essay from a Global Leaders Delegate, 2013).She explained that there is no sense on telling people who you are and what traits of character you have. The only thing that plays a role is how you prove your words by action. For this reason if the leader wants people to think he or she is honest, it is necessary to tell always the truth. If the leader wants people consider you generous to - give them money. The problem is that today, the majority of world leaders forgets about the responsibility, the truth and the devotion to people. They pursue their own objectives without paying attention to the people’s needs. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A GLOBAL LEADER 4 However, even when power of the influence is obvious, it is never shown. The real global leader treats other people as equals. Moreover, being a good leader also means to be a good psychologist and understand when the words are only the top of the iceberg; there is a story behind them, as Bob Dylan has illustrated, “Behind every beautiful thing is some kind of pain” (An Essay from a Global Leaders Delegate, 2013).Leaders know that sometimes things go wrong and the purpose is to improve and stabilize the situation. The real leader has to be first not only at work, but also in other aspects of life and evidently has versatile personality to be able to understand people with different cultures. According to Caligiuri, (2000) global leaders work with colleagues from other countries, interact with external and internal clients, negotiate in other countries, manage foreign suppliers or vendors, develop a strategic business plans, manage risk and a budget on a worldwide basis for their unit and supervise employees who are different nationalities. The personal characteristics of a successful global leader The personal characteristics of a successful global leader are as important as professional. While many personality characteristics exist, research has found that five factors provide a useful typology for classifying them, such as extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness or intellect and emotional, stability (Caligiuri, 2000). Extroversion. It means that the person is opened for other people. Extraverts are usually friendly, warm-hearted, enthusiastic, energetic and have good social skills. Agreeableness. This is a trait of character of a person who can easily find common language with others, create a friendly atmosphere at work, resolve any conflict. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A GLOBAL LEADER 5 Conscientiousness. Individuals who are conscientious demonstrate greater effort tasks commitment and they can be relied on. Global leadership tasks, like managing foreign suppliers or vendors, develop a strategic business plan on a worldwide basis and consequently require more effort and motivation to achieve success. (Caligiuri, 2006). Emotional stability. This characteristic shows how a person deal with stressful situations and how fast he or she can find the way out especially in case of unfamiliar situations.. Emotional stability is one of the most important personality characteristics. Openness or intellect. Openness makes the leader inquisitive explorer and intellect demonstrate the knowledge. Global leaders should be openness to deal with hardship in global market and working with colleagues and suppliers and so on (Lussier and Achua, 2007). These five traits are required from a good global leader and are essential to provide work efficiently. The professional characteristics of a successful global leader According to Caligiuri (2006), a global leader has to have an intimate knowledge of all kinds of fields, operate with global culture, culture-general, culture-specific and international business knowledge. Global culture knowledge. This is the mixture of cultures, habits, music, media of which the global leader has to have a good understanding. Culture-general knowledge. Such knowledge gives an opportunity to recognize the differences between various cultures. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A GLOBAL LEADER 6 Culture-specific knowledge. Culture-specific knowledge is defined as a perfect understanding of behavior, rituals and values of one country or another. International business knowledge. A successful global leader knows the financial possibilities, capacity and potentials of every country and how to improve them However, it is not enough to have the necessary knowledge for becoming an effective world leader, as it is only theory, and it is important to know how to apply it to the practice. Leadership skills may be developed only by doing. For every leader, including global leader is essential to develop and train leadership skills. Knowledge, skills and abilities needed to perform the activities of global leaders can be developed through training and development interactions such as didactic learning program, experimental opportunities and intensive experience ( Lussier & Achua, 2007). Consequently, there is a need to have varied skills and knowledge. First of all, a good leader has to know different languages because the language is the thing that opens every door. A person who speaks foreign languages is always highly respected. Then, Caligiuri (2006) stated that many of the global leadership tasks require a more advanced level of cognitive ability given the complexity of managing the demands of multiple cultures while completing managerial tasks. Leaders must grasp the impact of event in the early stages of crisis and try to solve and remove it before it growth in organization. Moreover, negotiating and bargaining skills are also required as they give an opportunity to resolve conflicts or to strike a compromise. The global leader has to be able to rule the world, not only to declare himself or herself the leader. This means that it is also necessary to be able to find common language with people who do not want to be agreeable at all. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A GLOBAL LEADER 7 Conclusion To sum up, it is important to say that being a global leader is not an easy job. It is not even a job - it is a lifestyle. The person with the cultural knowledge, business knowledge, language fluency, cognitive ability and so on can do global tasks and gain developmental opportunities more effective than who has not this skill (Caligiuri, 2000). A global leader has to have many features that for a simple person is difficult to have altogether. It is a strict, ambitious and steadfast person, but at the same patient, opened and friendly. In addition, multinational firms today need to integrate the entire global leadership development process into the global business goal of organization. Given that the effective performance of global leadership tasks is critical for multinational firms future success, it is important for organizations to approach global leadership development from this very strategic and comprehensive approach (Caligiuri,2000). THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A GLOBAL LEADER 8 References An Essay from a Global Leaders Delegate, (2013). A List Apart: Inclusion center for community and justice. Retrieved from http://www.inclusioncenter.org/blog/an-essay-from-a-global-leaders-delegate Caligiuri, P.M (2000). The Big Five personality characteristic as predictors of expatriate success. Personal Psychology. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2000.tb00194.x/abstract Lussier R.&.Achua F.C (2007). Effective leadership. South-Western Thomson. Spreitzer, G.M., McCall, Jr., M.W., & Mahoney, J.D. (1997). The early identification of international Executives. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Welch J, S. (2013). How to Think Like a Leader. A List Apart: LinkedIn. Retrieved from http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130708115451-86541065-how-to-think-like-a-leader Read More